Party $25 - AJ hits trips on river - facing all-in.

[jmc999]

Grunch:
I always have trouble laying down trips.

However, whenever I have trips and someone is shoving all in against me (especially in a small pot), I'm usually up against a set that turned a full house. Villian's stats indicate that he is a pretty tight player and could easily have 22/55 in this situation.

You didn't raise/lead the flop or turn -- you need to do that next time.

[aces_full]

I'm not commenting on other streets-it's all been said. But I will admit that I completely suck at reading players, especially on line where you can't see them and my attention span is short. I usually just play my cards/odds. So here is how I think of river decisions like this. Let me back up by saying that I have played over 100K hands from .01/.02NL up to .5/$1 NL, and GENERALLY when a typical SSNL player raises my river blocking/value bet and I call, the chips do not slide my way. Also, tight or not, the average SSNLer is not tricky/ballsy enough to raise a reasonable river bet with a busted draw. They will bet them if checked to though, so as played, since you called the whole way I would simply check/call a reasonable bet on the river because he will bet with worse hands as well as better ones and you get to showdown for cheap when you are behind, and might get $2 more from a wider range of hands you do beat. Also from what I know of SSNL villain isn't raising here with ace-rag unless he's a LAG.

Back to my origial idea though. There $30.39 in the pot and it looks like it's $23.72 more for you to call. Therefore the pot is laying you 1.28:1 on your call. This means in order for your call to be correct, villain must be pushing a weaker ace/total bluff at least 44% of the time. If I knew nothing at all about villain I probably fold this since I don't think a random $25NL player pushes here with a hand I beat 44% of the time or more. However, we do know something about the villain. He's got an 18% VP$IP with a 5% PFR. So he's tight. He's also probably not a moron. We can limit his limping hand range here to probably a pocket pair, two paint, or an ace with a good kicker (ten or better). Looking at how your holding stacks up against his possible holdings here:

21 games 0.047 secs 446 games/sec

Board: 5c Td Ah 2c As
Dead:

equity (%) win (%) tie (%)
Hand 1: 11.9048 % 04.76% 07.14% { AdJh }
Hand 2: 88.0952 % 80.95% 07.14% { TT, 55, A9s+, ATo+ }

Basically you need to win this pot 44% of the time, but against his range, your trips only has a dismal 12% pot equity. To me this means that even if you KNEW 100% that villain would push here with AK and AQ as well as hands that have you beat, you simply can not call this river raise regardless of how the hand played out.

I think this also goes back to my line of-as played, check call a reasonable bet of up to $3 on river. Say villain bets pot on river after you check. You only need to win 1/3 of the time to make this call +EV and I beleive villain would bet with a wider range of hands you beat.

As an aside, against a known loose cannon it becomes a tougher decision. If villain were the type to play any ace rag from any position, things change dramatically:

50 games 0.005 secs 10,000 games/sec

Board: 5c Td Ah 2c As
Dead:

equity (%) win (%) tie (%)
Hand 1: 51.0000 % 48.00% 03.00% { AdJh }
Hand 2: 49.0000 % 46.00% 03.00% { AA, TT, 55, A2s+, A2o+ }

The above shows that if villains range here includes any ace, you are actually a slight favorite here. Now it comes down to a question of reads. Is villain enough of a donk to raise me with any ace-rag hand he might have? If villain was something like 45/5/.6 I probably fold but hate it, and if villain is 45/19/3 I can't call this push fast enough and if I'm behind, reload.